I’m generally not a huge fan of books about film because they usually fall into one of two categories: academic books about film theory, or biographies of actors and directors. That said, I just finished reading a book that I really enjoyed and I thought some people out there might want to check it out as well. It’s called Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, and it’s written by British film critic Tom Shone. It was published back in 2004 and I first heard about it when Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity fame) mentioned it in his monthly column for The Believer. A little while later, I stumbled across it at a discount bookstore so I picked it up.

As the title indicates, the book is very much concerned with tracing the history of the summer blockbuster, which essentially started with Jaws, followed by Star Wars. From there, Shone wades through 80’s cinema right into the 90’s, recounting the production stories behind such movies as Alien, E.T., Back to the Future, Titanic, Last Action Hero, and Independence Day. He draws from a variety of interviews with many of the directors and producers that he conducted personally. I found it fascinating because he’s not just interested in parading out the good blockbusters and defending them, but he’s also interested in focusing on some of the bad ones and why they failed.

It’s true that in some ways Blockbuster is a response to Peter Biskind’s book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which celebrates 1970’s-era filmmaking and more or less insinuates that Spielberg and Lucas killed the art of film. Shone, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily hold Spielberg and Lucas up as heroes, but merely shows how their massive mainstream success was bound to happen eventually anyway. He has a great writing style, offering plenty of insight as to why certain movies caught on, along with some astute observations about the nature of the film industry and its consumers.

The book is particularly useful for people like myself who grew up in the 80’s or later, who never really knew a time before the summer blockbuster existed. It kind of put everything in perspective for me. Personally I couldn’t put the book down, and although I think it may be out of print at the moment, I definitely recommend tracking down a copy if you can.

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